Two campuses within the University of Wisconsin System announced Tuesday they are offering employees a voluntary retirement buyout with a one-time payout equal to 50% of an employee's annual base salary.

The buyouts at UW-Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay offer the same payout, but the eligibility requirements are different. At UW-Green Bay, the offer is being extended to all employees 55 and older who have at least five years of service. At UW-Oshkosh, employees must be at least 60 and have 25 years of service to the state to be eligible.

Tuesday's announcements bring to four the total number of campuses seeking to reduce their workforce through voluntary buyouts in the face of state budget cuts. UW-Eau Claire was the first campus to make the offer, followed last week by UW-Superior.(293)

Packers will get two days of practice in the cold

Green Bay - During the Mike Holmgren era, the Packers almost never practiced outside in the cold because he thought it was more important for the players to be focused completely on their preparation and not on how much they wished they were inside.

Some thought that Holmgren's real reason for staying inside was that he was from California.

After staying inside in 2007 and then taking a beating from the New York Giants in frigid temperatures at Lambeau Field in the NFC Championship game, coach Mike McCarthy has changed his tune and started practicing outdoors with a cold game approaching.

Right now, the Weather Channel is predicting a high of 4 degrees during the day and a low of minus-15 at night, so it's safe to say the wild-card game between the Packers and 49ers Sunday at Lambeau Field will be a cold-weather game.

On Wednesday McCarthy held only a walk-through in the team's new indoor training center, which was built on the east side of the stadium and features an artificial turf field. Players can walk out the doors of the locker room to the facility for walk-throughs they once conducted in their gymnasium.

On Thursday, the first full practice of the week will take place and McCarthy said it would be conducted in full pads. The early portion, when most of the individual drills and pre-practice walk-through is conducted, will take place in the Don Hutson Center.

Then the team will move outside to Ray Nitschke Field and perform their more extensive team work. The field has the same underground heating system that Lambeau Field does, so footing isn't a a huge problem.

Most of the players aren't thrilled about practicing outdoors and don't go out dressed in sleeves and shorts to help prepare them for Sunday. They dress warm and practice the way they normally would. The advantage is that they know how the ball will feel in their hands and travel through the air. They get a sense for how the footing will be.

"You just have to dress warm," quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. "The cold is a part of winter in Green Bay. You get kind of used to it. You deal with it. You learn how to throw the ball effectively and you figure out what are the most important things to keep warm, and that’s your head and your hands. As long as you have a good hand warmer and some sort of heat around your head, you should be OK.

"It definitely does change the texture of the football, so you have to factor that in when you’re tossing the ball to a back or when you’re throwing it. You have to make some small adjustments."

Though they don't like it, they do recognize there's a purpose in practicing outside and they admit that after awhile their bodies get used to it. For skill players, the most important thing is getting a feel for how the ball is going to come out of Rodgers' hands and travel when it's in the air.

He said he thought there was something to Holmgren's idea that when practice execution is at a high level, game execution is likely to be the same.

"You still have to be productive in practice," WR Jordy Nelson said. "You have to also be productive in the elements. I think we do a good job of doing some stuff inside so we can get a lot of repetition in, get warmed up, get the fundamentals down and then go outside and do our team stuff and handle the ball in the weather because that is what we play in.

"I think it's changed here, too because we have the field now, it's heated. It's like Lambeau. We still have good footing."

The 49ers practiced today on their outdoor fields in temperatures in the upper 60s in Santa Clara, Calif. They don't have the option of bringing in a refrigeration system that will bring the temperatures down into the zeroes. They plan to fly to Wisconsin on Friday, so they will have a day and a half to get their bodies accustomed to the cold.

When asked for a second time this week whether there was a way to prepare for the cold, 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh answered with a symbolic shoulder shrug.

“This was asked ... I got a chuckle out of it the other day," Harbaught told reporters in Santa Clara. "We’re going to practice today. Today’s going to be, we’ll attempt to make that our best practice of the year. And, the meetings that we have, make those the best meetings we’ve had the entire season.”

In other words, nothing. Or not anything he's going to make public.

The 49ers are a power-running team with a bone-crunching defense and of the two teams are probably built more for the cold than the Packers. And that is their mantra all this week - we're tougher than most teams and cold temperatures aren't going to affect us.

"I don't know, man, get me a 'W' and that'll take care of all the warmth I need," LB Patrick Willis said.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee and after being adopted lived in Wisconsin until he was 4 years old. His parents moved to California and that is where he played football until attending the University of Nevada in Reno.

Rodgers was born in California, too, and adapted quickly to the cold. There's no reason to think that the strong-armed Kaepernick won't be able to handle it either, although he might want to think about wearing some sleeves over those chiseled biceps and forearms.

"You just have to block it out," he said.

About Tom Silverstein

Tom Silverstein is in his 25th year covering the Green Bay Packers and 30th year with the Journal Sentinel. He is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year award winner.